New crops to boost biofuel

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Corn is about to get some competition in the biofuel industry.

A team of professors from MSU’s Department of Entomology examined several biofuel crops to see how many beneficial insects were attracted to the plants and found several other potential biofuel crop candidates.

Corn is a common biofuel source and makes up 30 percent to 40 percent of the cropping landscape in the Great Lakes region, said Douglas Landis, an entomology professor who worked on the project.

Research from the team’s report, which was published Saturday in an online edition of the journal BioEnergy Research, shows farmers could benefit from diversifying biofuel crops.

Landis said adding new plants, such as switchgrass, could increase the number of beneficial insects, which help to populate plants and ward off destructive pests.

“Each of (the plants) individually has their own set of beneficial insects,” Landis said.

“Corn has a modest set it supports and mixed prairie and switchgrass have an increase of the variety of insects.”

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.

Along with corn, Landis and Rufus Isaacs, an associate professor of entomology who also worked on the project, tested switchgrass and a mix of native grass and flowers called mixed native prairie.

Switchgrass currently is burned in co-firing plants to add biomass to coal, but Landis said more effective methods for extracting energy from biofuel plants are in the near future.

“If you look at the policies that have been set by (President Barack Obama’s) administration, it includes an increase in biofuel used to power the country,” Isaacs said.

John Walton, an associate director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at MSU, said diversifying plants for potential biofuel usage is important.

Although technology allowing switchgrass and other plants to be used as biofuel is still about five years away, Walton said it is important to begin to research the impact of planting such crops.

“No one will grow switchgrass until there’s a market for it and there won’t be a market until someone grows it,” Walton said. “Farmers are reasonably conservative. They don’t want to grow a new crop unless they’re sure they’ll get something back at the end of the year.”

The number of beneficial insects attracted to plants impacts the total number of plants grown, Isaacs said.

One-third of all food eaten is pollinated by bees, including food that is fed to livestock. In turn, Issacs said the wild prairie mixture gives back to bees by providing them with a plant they can obtain pollen from.

“There’s concern that honey bee populations are declining,” Isaacs said.

“One benefit for growing biofuel with diverse mixes of plants is we’d be providing that source these insects need. We hope (the report) is interesting to farmers who are thinking about how their land will be used,” Isaacs said.

Landis said diverse biofuel crops can have additional benefits for farmers and their land.

“Currently, there are portions of farms that aren’t very productive, maybe the soil is more marginal,” he said.

“(Switch grass and mixed prairie) can be grown on more marginal soil and form what our research is showing, may have additional benefits.”

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